


Thought followed thought

by bookoftheazuresky



Series: star followed star [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 06:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16989396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky
Summary: Jetfire brings some disturbing information and hypotheses to Jazz, while Thundercracker's worst suspicions are confirmed.





	1. Chapter 1

Jetfire pinged Jazz from medbay once the post-battle cleanup was underway.

“I’m kinda in the middle of something, can’t this wait?” Jazz asked, attention only half on the comm.

A pause. “I think you’ll want to see this. If not now, then soon.”

Being the highest-ranking officer on base was a pain. But part of being a smart Autobot was listening to your science staff, because when you didn’t then bad things happened. Like: oh whoops, Shockwave just unleashed a semi-sentient, metal-corroding slime mold thing, and it took over a supply depot!

Not that Jazz was thinking of any specific incidents or anything.

He flipped an acknowledgement back to Jetfire and started delegating the things that couldn’t be put off. Jazz could grab the casualty figures from Ratchet while he was down in medbay at least. Prowl was going to want them when Jazz reported in later.

It took a while to get everything wrapped up to the point he could make it down to medbay, and by the time that he did, triage had mostly finished. That was probably not a good thing. The pendulum of the war had started swinging back to favor the Decepticons once again, and a lot of mechs were dying where there had only been injuries in the past.

Ratchet was still wrist-deep in some mech’s internals, but his movements lacked the tense speed of a high-stakes medical procedure. Rather than bother him and court a wrench to the helm, Jazz accosted one of the junior medics scrubbing down his hands for the next patient and got directed to Jetfire’s room. He probably could have guessed, considering Jetfire’s size class, but why waste time?

“Primus, mech,” Jazz said when he poked his head in the door. “What the frag?”

Jetfire, covered in so much carbon scoring that Jazz couldn’t have identified his secondary color if he hadn’t already known it was red, sighed. Ash particles huffed out of his vents. “I’ve had worse. Usually making a crash landing from orbit though.”

“No kidding. You look like y’ made reentry pretty hard this time.” Jazz walked closer, running a quick scan to try and separate out what was just surface-level damage and what wasn’t. From his looks, the mech was going to need the soot and blackened paint residue debrided off and a full repaint loaded with new nanites, at the very least. He got back results for high-level anomalous radiation, and a mess of deep plasma burns, mostly on Jetfire’s scorched-black hands and chassis. Not life threatening, at least not for someone as big as Jetfire, but on someone smaller and less armored…

He frowned and leaned in a little, focusing on Jetfire’s left forearm shield. The heavy shuttle-grade armor wasn’t just burned, it had been melted down several layers, almost through to protoform. In the shape of a hand; Jazz could see the outlines of the thumb and the smallest finger in the depression. A quick comparison confirmed that it was from a bigger bot than Jazz, but smaller than Jetfire.

“Yikes,” Jazz commented, feeling a little cold. Space-grade armor was no joke- even if you had to be a shuttle-sized aerial for it to be worth the weight. “Someone did this with their _hands_?”

“That with his hand,” Jetfire turned his palm up, “this from where I grabbed him, and the rest is stellar corona burn- or as close to make no difference.” At Jazz’s judgmental face, Jetfire conceded, “I wouldn’t have grabbed him if he’d had functioning guns, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Jazz concluded that the thought processes of mechs in Jetfire’s size class were impossible for small carformers to follow; unless the opponent was a cassette, Jazz would never have the luxury of being able to pick another mech up as a combat tactic. “Next time, assume that they have ‘n energon sword in subspace at least. Might save you some damage. ‘S this what you wanted to talk about?” If it was, Jazz was going to be more than a bit annoyed.

“Peripherally. I assume you’ve got a secured datapad somewhere? I don’t think this should get around.” Jazz dug a spare out of his subspace and Jetfire plugged in the wrist-cable from his less-burned hand. Blue optics unfocused as Jetfire transferred over memory files, and Jazz scooped the pad up as soon as he disconnected. This had better be good.

Jazz opened the first file and went deadly still.

“Uh, ‘Fire,” he said carefully, as Jetfire had been known to get snippy with people who couldn’t tell flyers apart, “this isn’t just me who’s seein’ the resemblance. Right?”

“Of the two of us, which one fought him more?” Jetfire asked rhetorically. “This one was with Thundercracker and Skywarp, the gold and white seeker they added a few stellar cycles ago. I don’t think anyone has seen him in root mode before.” His voice turned ironic, and he indicated his burns. “Or seen what kind of outlier he is.”

A strangled laugh made its way out of Jazz’s vocalizer. “We definitely haven’t. We all assumed he was out of Ol’ Shocky’s latest batch of MTOs.” The Decepticon scientist had induced outlier abilities and introduced refined base combat programming for new cold constructed soldiers, upping their survival rate by a noticeable percentage.

“Shockwave,” Jetfire noted, “hated Starscream.”

“He sure did,” Jazz agreed. Left unsaid was that Shockwave would never have produced such a result by accident or coincidence. No, it had to be deliberate. Jazz’s processor buzzed with activity as the new piece of information slotted into place, casting his internal map of the war in a new light.

The shuttle paused for a long moment. Jazz looked over at him, awaiting what insight the scientist’s formidable processor had come up with.

“We assumed,” Jetfire started, “that the new-wave MTOs were the result of Megatron finally getting his attention out of orbit and back on the war. What if, instead of effect, we’re looking at the _cause_.”

“M’mech,” Jazz said, controlling himself so as not to rattle his plating with disquiet. Megatron had gone fragging lunar after he’d killed Starscream, but this was a Pit of a suspicion. “ _This_ is definitely worth callin’ me down here for. But _that_ thought ain’t reassuring at all.”


	2. Chapter 2

Thundercracker hadn’t realized why this whole new wingmate situation was giving him the creeps until Sunstorm stumbled in in the middle of the night shift.

(Actually, that was a lie. Thundercracker wasn’t an idiot. He just hadn’t let his misgivings rise to the level of conscious processing yet.)

Thundercracker was off the couch in an instant, half-read datapad abandoned, catching the reeling seeker before he could faceplant. “What in the Pit happened-“ made it out of his mouth before memory files caught up to him. Thundercracker had seen these types of injuries before.

He hauled the weakly protesting Sunstorm over to the couch, arranging the white and gold mech so that his wings wouldn’t be further abused. “Why are you even up?” Sunstorm complained. Thundercracker repressed a wince at the harshness of his voice. It was a vocalizer injury, but-

“I could say the same about you,” Thundercracker told him, then, “Stay _still_.”

Crimped neck cables. Dented shoulder vents. Dark paint transfers. Wings marked and bleeding from the prints of hands rather bigger than a seeker’s. Hips-

A snarl bubbled up in Thundercracker’s throat. MTOs were, like all cold constructed, considered capable of consenting to interface from their date of creation. Of course, considering the laws had been written by Senators who wanted to be able to play with their new pleasurebot immediately…it was much less socially acceptable than it was legal to interface with someone in their first few stellar cycles of functioning. And Sunstorm didn’t strike Thundercracker as someone who would enjoy mixing pain in with ‘facing. His consent to whatever had been done was questionable at best.

Of course, even as young as he was, Sunstorm was an outlier and a Decepticon warbuild and more than capable of taking care of himself. But Thundercracker had thought that about Starscream too, and look how that had ended.

(It had ended with his trineleader’s energon soaking his plating. It hadn’t ended, because Megatron couldn’t face what he’d done and Thundercracker had the result under his hands, shivering with tension or pain or maybe fear.)

Young, Thundercracker thought. On a hunch, he asked, as if it was a normal question, “Was the ‘facing before or after the beating?”

Sunstorm seemed to relax slightly at his tone. “After.”

Of course, Thundercracker thought, tank twisting with nausea. He kept his voice nonchalant, and went with his intuition, seeking confirmation. “And what was Megatron’s reason for the beating?”

White wings drooped. “I was being pathetic.”

Thundercracker snorted before he could stop himself (something he’d snapped at Starscream for more than once). Sunstorm looked up at him, face split between confusion and annoyance. Thundercracker dropped a hand onto his helm by way of reassurance. Carefully, picking his words, he said, “ _I’m_ your immediate commander. You’re doing very well for someone of your experience level. It’s not fair to expect you to perform like,” _Starscream_ , “someone who has been doing this for millions of stellar cycles.”

Sunstorm took a second to process this. “But I could be doing _better_.”

The part of his processor that sounded like his former trineleader asked, _and the way to make you better is to injure you and lower your performance capacity?_ “You will be,” Thundercracker said soothingly, shoving that voice away. “It’s an incremental process, just like flight practice. Maneuvers aren’t perfect on the first try. It takes time to get them right.”

The young seeker didn’t contradict him, but the set of his mouth indicated that he wasn’t happy.

(And why would he be? Thundercracker had heard Megatron tell him that he was special, an asset, a _weapon_. But there was a double edge to such compliments, because you had to be worthy of them. And Sunstorm was too young to see past the disappointment for the manipulation it was.)

“Why don’t I help you clean the paint transfers off so that we can fix you up,” Thundercracker suggested. “Your wings have gotta be hurting.”

~

_I can’t do this again,_ Thundercracker thought as he packed Starscream’s old medkit back up. _I can’t, it’s obscene._

Bad enough to be handed a just-thawed MTO straight from Shockwave and told that he was your new wingmate. Worse for him to resemble Starscream so much, and to suspect that it was a deliberately manufactured resemblance. But to have the awful, sneaking suspicions that Megatron was abusing yet another mech, one that was far less capable of protecting his spark than Thundercracker’s former trineleader, and then to have it confirmed in such a way…

And what could he do to protect his trinemate? Nothing. Thundercracker could read the way the wind was blowing- Sunstorm had been made to replace Starscream. As Air Commander, as second, in Megatron’s berth, and under his whip, too. Anything that Thundercracker did overtly to subvert that agenda would only lead to pain: for Sunstorm, for himself, maybe even for Skywarp if Megatron was feeling vicious. The Decepticon leader hadn’t been especially discriminating with his _examples_ once Starscream was out of the picture.

Primus, Thundercracker hadn’t liked his trineleader sometimes, but everything had gotten so much worse after Megatron had killed him.

_Don’t think about it_ , Thundercracker told himself. _Think about the things you can change, not the ones you can’t_.

He couldn’t change what Megatron did, but if Sunstorm was really going to be forced into command, Thundercracker might be able to arm him a little better for the position. There were mechs he could talk to. Information he could gather. Tricks with a blaster, a blade, that he could pass on. A spark he might be able to save, if he was smart, and careful, and lucky. He couldn’t do anything obvious now that wouldn’t make things worse, but once he was back in the Air Commander’s trine…well, people weren’t so blindly complacent in Megatron’s leadership as they had been before.

Thundercracker just needed to make sure that Megatron didn’t break Sunstorm before they all got there.

He’d already failed one wingmate. He didn’t want to fail another.


End file.
